Free Web NovelThe outline of the breakwater had already appeared.
Guide piles lined up, pinning the channel entrance like a string.
Gear-driven transporters glided along the shore, steadily pushing heavy wooden beams to their respective bases.
Overhead gantry cranes swung back and forth on the elevated tracks, thick ropes dangling, lifting and positioning granite blocks one by one.
The foreman was coordinating the queue at one end, while in the middle, someone was testing the locking mechanism of the crane arm.
Russell, as the technical director of Dawn Harbor, stood at a high point on the slope, arms crossed, staring at the row of freshly driven piles.
He remained motionless until the pile driving stopped, then nodded slightly.
The workers on the shore saw him and greeted him, "Lord Russell!"
No one found anything amiss with that title.
Russell didn't respond, only giving a faint nod.
But in his heart, a subtle feeling arose. This port, this dam, actually made him feel a sense of participation—even pride.
Russell was originally a port craftsman under the Calvin Family. Although he could be considered a foreman, within the family system, a craftsman was, after all, just a craftsman.
But as a commoner, Russell was quite content. He married, had children, and slowly accumulated seniority.
He had originally planned to live his life guarding the embankments in the Southeast. When he got older, he would send his son to Tidal City to be a foreman. Such a life, though not glorious, would be successful.
Until one day, an order broke his plans.
The Calvin Family was sending someone to assist the “Eighth Young Master” in building a port in the North. He had been unluckily chosen.
On the surface, it was said to be appreciation, but he knew in his heart that such a task was akin to exile in the family's eyes.
Russell didn't sleep that night, bidding farewell to his wife and children one by one, even arranging his affairs.
He thought he was going to his death.
Not to mention what he saw on that journey north: frozen soil, ruins, starving people, and endless wind and snow.
It wasn't until he arrived at Red Tide City that he realized the North was different from the barbaric land he had imagined.
That city was even more orderly and prosperous than many large cities in the Southeast.
For the first time, he began to think that perhaps things wouldn't necessarily turn out for the worse.
But when he arrived at the Dawn Harbor construction site that day and stepped into the mudflats, his heart sank again.
He had worked on seven port projects in the South. Just by stepping on the ground, he could tell how much stone would be needed to fill it.
He knew what kind of ground could support a dam and what would collapse.
And this was not ground at all; it was quicksand that could swallow people.
"This mudflat, I'm afraid, could swallow an entire port." This was Russell's first impression of Dawn Harbor.
What worried him even more was the impossibly young Lord Louis.
Russell had seen the consequences of nobles meddling in projects.
Sometimes, a single sentence like, "I think this embankment line can be moved over there," could add half a year to a port's construction.
And just by looking at the site selection, he knew that Lord Louis had no understanding of port construction.
At that time, Russell stood by the muddy water every day, outwardly silent but inwardly already planning his retreat strategy in case of failure.
After all, he didn't want to be buried in a noble's ill-conceived project.
But just as Russell made up his mind to take things one step at a time, Louis surprised him.
The young Lord convened a small meeting for management, without superfluous pleasantries, cutting directly to the core of the problem and refusing empty talk.
He broke down the massive port construction goal into phased tasks, marking time nodes and responsible persons for each step, and even listing emergency plans one by one.
The negative atmosphere, originally shrouded by mudflats, fish plagues, and wavering morale, rapidly disintegrated under that clear plan, replaced by a collaborative drive that had been sparked.
In the following days, Lord Louis never overstepped his authority or dictated details.
Louis still inspected the site daily but never interfered with construction specifics.
Whenever he had a new suggestion, he simply wrote it in his notebook and let Mike and Russell decide if it was feasible.
"You are the experts at this."
"If you say it can be done, then do it your way."
Louis's tone was calm when he said this, but it carried a natural sense of trust. freewёbnoνel.com
For the first time in front of a noble, Russell felt a strange respect—not a show, but treating craftsmen as a true part of the team.
What surprised Russell next were the two new tools the Red Tide Craftsmen's Guild brought to the port construction.
One device, called a gantry crane, could slide smoothly along pre-laid tracks, using a winch to lift entire sections of timber.
The other was a gear-driven transporter, which, with the aid of steam power and a chain drive, allowed two or three people to push hundreds of pounds of stone forward without extra manpower.
The first time he saw the crane lift a heavy foundation stone and steadily lower it onto the alignment line, Russell stood by, almost thinking he had seen wrong.
He carefully examined the counterweights and pulleys, confirming that this was not magic, nor some ingenious trick, but a finished product built purely on components and calculations.
For Russell, who had been a craftsman all his life, this was a miracle without magic.
"It actually—it actually works," he muttered, feeling at a loss for words to describe it.
What surprised Russell even more was the origin of these tools.
They weren't ancestral methods passed down by some master craftsman, nor were they private modifications by an old artisan.
The craftsmen from Red Tide made it very clear that the initial designs for both pieces of equipment were drawn by Lord Louis.
"The gantry crane was personally prototyped by His Lordship last year," Mike told Russell.
Mike was older than him, the director of the Red Tide Workshop, with a loud voice and even a bit crude, but his attitude was consistently respectful when speaking of His Lordship.
"The chain drive for the transporter was originally used on wheat threshing machines; it was a structure Lord Louis tinkered with and modified."
Russell initially dismissed these stories as Mike's bragging.
But the more he saw and understood, the more he began to actively ask Mike about their use, slowly accepting these Red Tide-style technologies.
However, what truly made him feel different wasn't the technology, but the system.
Every day, there were checklists and reports on the construction site.
Who was responsible for a task, what the progress was, whether handovers were completed, whether mistakes were reported—sheets of paper were posted at the workshop entrance for everyone to see.
"What's the use of this?" he couldn't help but ask once.
Mike took out several documents and showed him examples: "Lord Louis said that technology is important, but systems must also be important."
But Russell didn't take those so-called process sheets and responsibility cards to heart.
He had worked his whole life and knew what truly made a project move.
It wasn't plans written on paper, but on-site experience, feel, and shouts.
Russell even felt that this practice of writing down craftsmen's work in tables was a bit pretentious.
"A construction site isn't a school," he thought at the time.
But Russell had no right to stop Mike from implementing this system in the port construction.
Initially, all the craftsmen from the Southeast Province were unaccustomed to it.
Craftsmen complained about the tedious filling, squad leaders disliked the fragmented tasks, and some simply continued to schedule by memory as before.
For a few days, no major problems arose, until a not-so-small error occurred: a batch of foundation stones was delayed due to a scheduling conflict in transportation, forcing an entire section of the wall to halt work for a day.
Mike simply pulled out that sheet, marked out the tasks of the relevant individuals according to the time schedule, had people reschedule and rework according to the rules, and imposed reasonable penalties.
As a result, no one dared to disregard those sheets anymore. In less than two days, the process caught up, even finishing half a day ahead of the original plan.
Russell stood by, watching the effects of that form unfold one by one. Who was responsible for what was clear at a glance, and if a problem arose, there was no shirking responsibility.
Clear handovers meant no one passed the buck, and remedies were quicker.
Moreover, everyone involved understood the true meaning of their work.
They weren't being pushed to work, but actively saw themselves as a part of the entire project.
This was more stable, efficient, and less contentious than any construction site he had ever seen.
Russell had to admit, this thing was extremely effective.
That night, he sat in his room, turning over that day's process card for a long time.
Not just in work, Russell's life was also far more respectable than he had imagined.
He now lived in a semi-finished Red Tide dome house allocated by Dawn Harbor.
It looked unassuming from the outside, but inside it was dry, warm, and fully equipped, several times better than his brick house in the South.
At night, there was hot water for bathing, and occasionally he could hear music and dialogue from the port's stage.
"Performances every day?" Russell couldn't help but mutter.
Initially, Russell didn't pay much attention, but later, on several idle nights, he leaned outside and listened to a few segments.
After that, he simply squeezed into the crowd.
Most of the plays depicted old stories of the North, and some new ones told how the Red Tide Knights repelled barbarian raids, or how the Red Tide City granary saved grain during a plague of insects.
They always revolved around the young Lord.
Lord Louis on stage was the great sun of the North, fighting on the battlefield and protecting the North.
He sat in the crowd, watching the play, and for some reason, his heart tightened. He thought, "Lord Louis is a different kind of Lord."
Not to mention the salary.
The basic salary was three times higher than in the South, paid monthly, with quarterly bonuses, special position allowances, and operational risk subsidies.
Most importantly, no one treated him like a servant.
Even the Knights from Red Tide addressed him as "Lord Russell."
He was accustomed to years of working with his head down, and at first, he felt uncomfortable hearing it, turning back several times, thinking they were calling someone else.
Russell privately asked Mike, and also a few craftsmen from Red Tide.
Mike, drinking wine, said earnestly, "It's even better in Red Tide. Detached houses, children can go to school, and there are subsidies for work."
What moved Russell even more was one evening when Louis called him forward:
"If you are willing to stay in the North, you won't just be Dawn Harbor's chief craftsman. I also want you to join Red Tide's Craftsmen's Department, in the position of deputy director, assisting Mike in managing a wider range of workshops. Of course, I won't force you; think about it carefully yourself."
That night, after Russell returned to his room, he sat at the table, lost in thought for a long time.
Russell wasn't after an official position, nor was he seeking a few more gold coins. He simply saw himself truly being needed.
Russell began to consider bringing his wife and two children to the North. He knew in his heart that the North was unstable, and Dawn Harbor had only just laid its foundation, so he had to observe more. freeweɓnovel.cøm
But he had already begun to seriously consider it.
On the east side of the port area, cranes and pile drivers roared incessantly.
Meanwhile, on the southwest inner bay, another quieter yet equally focused area had also quietly taken shape.
That was Dawn Harbor's shipbuilding workshop.
The inner bay had calm tides and gentle waves, a high elevation not prone to waterlogging, and was only a hundred paces from the main channel of the port basin.
In his initial planning, Louis had designated this spot as the "Shipyard Workshop Base" for building the first batch of trial ships.
Now, two long slipways had been firmly embedded beneath the sand by the craftsmen.
The slipways, with oak troughs and animal oil lubrication, extended into the shallow water. Once the hull was built, pulling the anchor chain would allow it to slide into the sea with the slope.
The workshop itself was still under construction, but the core area had been divided into five workstations, sequentially arranged for four types of operations: keel splicing, cabin encapsulation, mast erection, and steam testing.
The innermost open space in the bay was reserved as a storage yard, currently piled high with selected oak and pine timber, neatly stacked, with the scent of cured wood and tar in the air.
Oak was the crucial material for keels, the very foundation of shipbuilding. Initially, Louis thought it could only be transported from the Southeast Province.
But that meant long-distance transport, double the cost, and more troublesome, almost all of that timber was monopolized by the Calvin Family.
Even though Louis was Duke Calvin's son, it was difficult for him to control the supply rhythm, and any slight change would put him at a disadvantage.
And this was precisely the situation he did not want to see.
But just a few days before the Calvin merchant fleet planned to depart for the Southeast front to discuss timber matters, Louis learned through daily intelligence that excellent natural oak existed in the North.
He immediately dispatched a special envoy, carrying Wheat Wave Territory's grain, to personally visit that remote territory.
There was no bargaining, no mention of long-term contracts, only one direct and enticing condition: "Grain for oak."
Now, the Lord there didn't even hesitate. Axes ➤ NоvеⅠight ➤ (Read more on our source) throughout the entire territory swung furiously, and shaved oak logs were transported to Dawn Harbor one after another.
In the empire's coastal ports, the prevailing ship types were mostly double-masted or triple-masted sailing wooden ships.
The structure was typically a grease-coated wooden hull, relying on wind power to fill the sails, plus a few skilled sailors, to traverse the seas.
Several noble families in the South had tried newer methods, installing magic energy furnaces on their ships.
They were indeed fast, but too expensive, and most importantly, too unstable.
If the winds and waves were strong, fire would erupt from beneath the mast, or even crack the ship's planks.
Merchant fleets who had used them dared not mention them again, preferring to spend twice as much time sailing.
So when Louis proposed steam-powered ships without magic, many craftsmen were actually puzzled.
"Burning water with fire to make wheels turn?" This was the most common query heard in the port.
But Louis didn't explain too much.
He only put forward three terms: steam engine, gear transmission, and paddlewheel propulsion.
This was not a direct copy of any existing ship type, but the prototype of the Red Tide-style ocean-going vessel he hoped to build in the North.
It might be cumbersome, it might still be immature, but it could traverse sea winds and undercurrents without magic or wind power.
"I don't expect it to succeed on the first try," he told the craftsmen, "but at least we must take the first step. This is our ship."
